Jill Biden in her first solo outing of the 2024 campaign said Monday it was “a little shocking” that a sizeable number of Republicans are still thinking of voting for Donald Trump even after his federal indictment, a subject that her husband has tried to avoid speaking about.
She told Democratic donors that the 2024 election presents a choice between what she described as the “strong, steady leadership” of President Joe Biden and the “chaos and corruption, hatred and division” of “MAGA Republicans”.
The first lady, speaking to a small group of Democrats in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, said she was surprised to see a headline before her flight landed that described a majority of Republicans in a poll saying they were still planning to vote for Trump, who is set to appear in a Florida court on Tuesday.
“They don’t care about the indictment. So that’s a little shocking, I think,” she said.
The first lady, opening a campaign swing on the East and West coasts after a gruelling six-day trip abroad, was at times grim as she referred to Trump’s time in office and the stakes for next year’s election, saying, “We cannot go back to those dark days.”
Though the 2024 election in which Biden is seeking reelection is more than a year away, helping him win a second term is a top priority for the first lady, who is also a community college English professor.
She started a three-day fundraising swing Monday in New York City before flying later that night to California. She is scheduled to hold events in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with most of her time to be spent raking in money at four political events, including two in California’s Bay Area, to benefit the president’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and Democratic state party committees.
Biden will also join Gabrielle Giffords at a separate event in Los Angeles to mark 30 years of anti-gun violence work by the Giffords Law Center, a nonprofit led by the former congresswoman. Giffords was shot in the head in 2011 during a constituent event in her Arizona district.
As she was in 2020 and the 2022 campaigns, Jill Biden will be active in the 2024 election cycle, helping the Democratic Party build up its resources and infrastructure while reminding supporters of what’s at stake.
That message was stark Monday, when she urged donors to “think about where we were three years ago.”
“We know what’s in store with the MAGA Republicans. We just know it, right? We know because we’ve lived it. We’ve seen it,” she said. “We know what it’s like to see US policy tweeted out in late-night tweet-storms.”